50 Fun Facts About The World Wars

In what setting did Germany sign the 1918 armistice, which Hitler reused to take France's surrender in 1940?

A railway carriage, a dining car parked in the Forest of Compiègne, hosted both signings. Hitler had it hauled out of its museum to the exact spot and sat in the chair the French commander had used in 1918.

What relation was Britain's King George V to both the Russian tsar and the German kaiser of World War I?

First cousin to both, George V saw the war topple the other two thrones. In 1917 he swapped his German family name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, for Windsor.

Which soft drink was created in Nazi Germany when a wartime embargo cut off supplies of Coca-Cola syrup?

Fanta was first mixed from leftovers such as whey and apple pomace by Max Keith, head of Coca-Cola's German branch. The name came from a salesman's reply when Keith told his team to use their Fantasie, or imagination.

Cher Ami, a US Army messenger who lost a leg carrying a dispatch in France in 1918, was what animal?

A pigeon, Cher Ami reached the loft with the message hanging from a shattered leg. Legend credits the bird with saving the trapped 'Lost Battalion', and its body is kept at the Smithsonian.

The B-29 bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb in August 1945, was named after whom?

The pilot's mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, had herself been named after the heroine of a novel. Colonel Paul Tibbets gave the plane her name on 5 August 1945, the day before the mission.

British wartime propaganda credited which vegetable with RAF pilots' night vision, when radar was the real reason?

Carrots took the credit while the real reason, newly adopted radar, stayed secret. The public believed it, and extra planting left Britain with a 100,000-ton surplus by 1942.

During the Christmas truce of 1914, British and German soldiers are said to have played which sport in no man's land?

Soccer kick-abouts, sometimes with a bully-beef tin for a ball, turn up in many soldiers' letters. Historians doubt any organised match took place, but one German lieutenant recorded 'a lively game'.

Which politician ran Britain's navy as First Lord of the Admiralty when both World War I and World War II began?

Winston Churchill had held the post since 1911, and he was handed the same desk again on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war. Eight months later he was prime minister.

Which World War I weapon got its name from a British cover story about 'water carriers for Mesopotamia'?

The tank was hidden behind the claim that its hull was a water carrier, and the committee in charge shortened the label to keep the secret. The first prototype went by another nickname, Little Willie.

The future Queen Elizabeth II trained for which job after joining Britain's Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945?

Vehicle mechanic and driver was the 18-year-old princess's training from February 1945. Within five months she held the honorary rank of junior commander, the women's equivalent of captain.

In which city did a wrong turn by Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver stall the car beside an assassin in June 1914?

Sarajevo's police never told the drivers that the route had changed, so the car swung into a side street and stalled as it tried to reverse. Gavrilo Princip happened to be standing a few steps away.

Germany's invasion of which country on 1 September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war two days later?

Poland was attacked after Germany staged fake border incidents so that it could pose as the victim. Britain and France declared war on 3 September but sent very little practical help.

A surprise Japanese air raid on which US naval base on 7 December 1941 brought America into World War II?

Pearl Harbor had eight US battleships in port that morning, and every one was damaged or sunk. President Roosevelt called it 'a date which will live in infamy', and America declared war the next day.

Operation Overlord put Allied troops ashore on D-Day, 6 June 1944, along the coast of which French region?

Normandy was chosen partly because the Germans expected the blow at the Pas-de-Calais, the closest point to Britain. A deception plan built around a fictitious American army group kept them looking there.

Which flower became a symbol of remembrance for fallen soldiers thanks to John McCrae's poem 'In Flanders Fields'?

Poppy flowers grew over the graves McCrae described after burying a friend in May 1915. The Canadian army doctor is said to have thrown the poem away, only for fellow soldiers to rescue it.

Which Jewish teenager kept a diary she called 'Kitty' while hiding behind a bookcase in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944?

Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, but her father Otto, the family's only survivor, was handed the notebooks his secretaries had saved. The diary has since been translated into over 70 languages.

Which Japanese city was hit by the second atomic bomb after the crew could not see their first target, Kokura?

Nagasaki was only the backup: the bomber made three runs over Kokura before flying on with its fuel running low. Kyoto had been taken off the list earlier, when War Secretary Henry Stimson argued for its cultural value.

From which French port were more than 338,000 Allied soldiers rescued by naval ships and 'little ships' in 1940?

Dunkirk's rescue fleet of over 800 vessels included fishing boats, yachts and lifeboats that ferried men out from the beaches. Only 7,669 soldiers got away on the first day.

Which Cunard liner was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Ireland in May 1915, killing 128 Americans on board?

Lusitania went down in about 18 minutes with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives. The sinking turned American opinion against Germany, though the United States stayed out of the war until 1917.

Which German cipher machine did Alan Turing and the codebreakers of Bletchley Park work to crack during World War II?

Enigma scrambled each letter through a set of turning rotors, so every keypress used a different cipher. Many commentators say that reading its messages shortened the war substantially.

Which German emperor abdicated as World War I ended and spent years of Dutch exile chopping down trees?

Wilhelm II felled thousands of trees at Huis Doorn, the country house he bought in the Netherlands. He was still living there when German troops occupied the country in 1940, and he died the following year.

Which exiled revolutionary did Germany let cross its territory by train in April 1917 to stir up trouble in Russia?

Vladimir Lenin rode with about thirty other exiles on what both sides called a 'sealed train', although passengers were in fact allowed off to spend a night in Frankfurt. He reached Petrograd that same month.

Which US president drew up the Fourteen Points and championed the League of Nations, only for America never to join?

Woodrow Wilson turned down a Republican compromise that would have let the Senate ratify the peace treaty and take America into the League. He was still awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for founding it.

Which Soviet wartime leader, born Ioseb Jughashvili, ruled under an alias taken from the Russian word for steel?

Joseph Stalin had used the alias, often translated as 'Man of Steel', since 1912. As a young revolutionary he went by 'Koba', after the bandit hero of a novel he admired.

Which dictator, known as Il Duce, was dismissed by Italy's king in July 1943 and later freed by German forces?

Benito Mussolini was sprung from custody in the Gran Sasso raid that September, then set up by Hitler as the figurehead of a puppet state in northern Italy. He had founded fascism in 1919.

Which US president, a World War I artillery captain, learned of the atomic bomb only after taking office in April 1945?

Harry Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when Franklin Roosevelt died, and he had been told nothing about the secret weapon. Within four months he approved its use against Japan.

Which general led the D-Day invasion as Supreme Allied Commander, having drafted a note taking the blame if it failed?

Dwight Eisenhower wrote 'If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone', and never had to release it. Eight years later he was elected the 34th US president.

Which French general fled to London in June 1940 and urged his countrymen by BBC radio to keep fighting?

Charles de Gaulle reached few listeners with that first appeal on 18 June, and a French court martial soon condemned him to death in his absence. He went on to become the undisputed leader of Free France.

Which Japanese emperor announced surrender by radio on 15 August 1945, in a classical style unfamiliar to listeners?

Hirohito recorded the speech on a phonograph disc, and it is thought to be the first time ordinary Japanese had heard any emperor's voice. Army hardliners attempted a coup the night before to stop it.

Which British prime minister came home from Munich in 1938 declaring 'peace for our time', a year before war broke out?

Chamberlain was echoing Disraeli, who had come home from Berlin in 1878 claiming 'peace with honour'. He resigned in May 1940, eight months into the war.

Which French marshal, hailed as the Lion of Verdun in World War I, headed the Vichy regime in World War II?

Philippe Pétain was sentenced to death for treason in 1945, when he was 89. His former protégé, by then head of the new French government, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

Which World War I field marshal, the victor of Tannenberg, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933?

Paul von Hindenburg was Germany's president by then and agreed only reluctantly, after dissolving parliament twice in 1932. When he died the following year, Hitler merged the presidency into his own office.

Which German field marshal earned the nickname 'the Desert Fox' leading the Afrika Korps in North Africa?

Erwin Rommel was implicated in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler and given a choice between a trial and suicide. He took a cyanide pill that October.

Which American general vowed 'I shall return' after President Roosevelt ordered him to leave the Philippines in 1942?

Douglas MacArthur first made the vow at a small station in South Australia, days after slipping away from the island fortress of Corregidor. In 1945 he accepted Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

Which British officer's part in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule inspired a 1962 film epic starring Peter O'Toole?

T. E. Lawrence had worked in the region as a British Museum archaeologist from 1910 to 1914, which is how he came to know it. He died in 1935, aged 46, after a motorcycle crash in Dorset.

Manfred von Richthofen, the top-scoring fighter ace of World War I with 80 victories, was known by which nickname?

The Red Baron began the war on horseback as a cavalry officer and only transferred to the air service in 1915. The bright colours of his fighter wing's aircraft earned it the name 'the Flying Circus'.

Which French general became Supreme Allied Commander in March 1918 and set the armistice terms for Germany that autumn?

Ferdinand Foch thought the peace treaty that followed far too lenient and called it 'a capitulation, a treason'. He wanted a permanent occupation of the Rhineland to stop Germany attacking again.

Which Norwegian's surname became a word for 'traitor' after he collaborated with the German occupiers from 1940?

Vidkun Quisling tried to seize power by radio broadcast on the day Germany invaded, a coup that collapsed within a week when the Germans dropped him. He was shot by firing squad in Oslo in October 1945.

Which Japanese term for World War II suicide pilots recalls typhoons that scattered Mongol invasion fleets?

Kamikaze means 'divine wind', the name given to the storms that wrecked Kublai Khan's fleets in 1274 and 1281. The first organised suicide attacks came at Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

What name was given to the German bombing campaign that struck London for 56 of 57 days and nights from September 1940?

The Blitz took its name from Blitzkrieg, the German for 'lightning war'. At the peak, 177,000 Londoners spent the night in Underground stations that officials had at first been ordered to lock.

In the Zimmermann Telegram of 1917, Germany offered which country Texas and Arizona in return for joining the war?

Mexico's generals studied the offer and concluded that such a war was unwinnable. British codebreakers had intercepted the cable, and its release turned American public opinion sharply against Germany.

Germany's side was called the Axis in World War II, but what name did its World War I alliance go by?

Central Powers described where the allies sat on the map, wedged between Russia to the east and France and Britain to the west. Germany's partners were Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

Which palace's Hall of Mirrors hosted the signing of the 1919 peace treaty between Germany and the Allies?

Versailles was a pointed choice: the German Empire had been proclaimed in the same hall in 1871. The signing fell five years to the day after the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Which Nazi camp complex was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945, now Holocaust Remembrance Day?

Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in a single location in history. The anniversary of its liberation has been marked as International Holocaust Remembrance Day since 2005.

Which 1916 battle in northern France opened with the bloodiest day in British Army history, 57,470 casualties?

The Somme killed 19,240 British soldiers on 1 July alone. By the time the battle ended, more than a million men from both sides had been killed or wounded.

Germany's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union was code-named after which medieval Holy Roman Emperor?

Barbarossa, 'red beard', was Frederick I, who in legend sleeps in a mountain cave until Germany needs him. The plan was called Operation Otto until Hitler had it renamed in December 1940.

Which 1916 clash off Denmark's North Sea coast was the largest naval battle of World War I, with 250 ships engaged?

Jutland ended with both sides claiming victory. It was the war's only full-scale clash of battleships, and it left Britain's naval blockade of Germany unbroken for the rest of the war.

Which 1915 Allied landing on a Turkish peninsula failed, made Mustafa Kemal's name and is remembered each Anzac Day?

Gallipoli cost each side about 250,000 casualties before the invaders withdrew in January 1916, after eight months of fighting. Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk, founded the Turkish republic in 1923.

Which March 1918 peace treaty, named after the town where it was signed, took Bolshevik Russia out of World War I?

Brest-Litovsk cost Russia control of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic provinces. It lasted eight months: the armistice that ended the fighting in the west annulled it.

Which American programme, signed into law in March 1941, shipped food, oil and weapons to Britain and other Allies?

Lend-Lease ended the neutrality America had written into law in the 1930s, nine months before the country itself went to war. The aid reached the Soviet Union and China as well as Britain.